 I'm Wendy Lowe and I'm your friend as we journey to take your health back. We are coming to you live from downtown Honolulu from the studios of Think Tech Hawaii. Think Tech Hawaii brings you topics from 45 very colorful show hosts with very diverse backgrounds. Today, our topic of discussion will be on the food that we can be hashtag grown not flown right here in Hawaii. What I would like you to take away from today's discussion is learning how simple it is to take your health back by getting back to the basics of growing your own food on the tar gardens. No matter where you live and no matter your economic circumstances no matter what they are. Today I'm very honored to welcome my special guest me. So I felt the need to just share from my heart the value of growing with the tar gardens once again. So let me tell you a little bit about my background. I went to college didn't finish but then I got married and I ran a chocolate company for 20 years. So for 20 years I made the people of Hawaii very happy and very satisfied with the chocolates that we were able to produce. For 20 years I did exactly that. When I turned 50 I sold the company and I retired. So now mind you I had no idea what I was doing until I learned it and I learned it and I understood it and I loved it. I also had two young daughters at the same time as my chocolate factory so my daughters grew up in the chocolate world and so now funny though it's really funny because they don't like chocolate so much and that was a good thing for me because they wouldn't eat all the profits but now 20 years thus I have now been thrown into the world of getting healthy and thus the title of my show take your health back with Wendy Lowe. Now I'm just a Tira chick from Miley and I knew nothing about whole food nutrition and what it meant to our bodies but now I truly understand the power of plants and growing it. So now I'd like to really encourage all of you to just sit back and enjoy what I have to share with you about the tar gardens. So what is a tar garden? Let me show you and let me tell you all about what the tar gardens are. Tar gardens are just a vehicle to allow you to grow food. I use non-GMO chemical-free growing practices that I can produce the best quality of food for myself, my body, my friends and my family and I encourage a lot of us to do that and did I tell you that when I grow my veggies I have peace of mind that whatever I produce on my tower I know I'm getting the best so it's on demand that I get to eat my food. I travel a lot and so that means when I go on my trips I don't have to clean up my icebox because I didn't buy any green stuff. It's all growing on my tower and when I come back from my trip I don't buy any more because it's growing on my tower and I don't have to worry about it dying or about it not being watered because it does have a little pump that sends the water up the top of the tower trickles down every day 24 times a day it's all set on timer and so I don't have to do a whole lot because it does it for me. I want to share with all of you that I consume probably about $120 worth of food from my tower monthly okay that's about $120 of food and if I just gave you a calculation of what consumption I have on my kale let me just tell you every morning I cut about 10 leaves of kale 10 leaves of kale of this size of this caliber chemical free non-gmo cut blended into my body I calculate that cost me about four dollars just for my kale if you're going with Hawaii prices four dollars a day times 30 days a month I consume at least a hundred twenty dollars of kale in my body every month not to mention I grow basil lettuce I had switched charred tomatoes cucumbers right now I have eggplant on my towers and mind you I live in urban Honolulu in a condominium right on the 11th floor and I've been doing this for the last seven and a half years so what it does it gives me peace of mind also the targ garden saves me a lot of money all right and that's another point that I really want to stress looking at all that green on the targ gardens it really is just powerful food so a powerful food source for me my family and my friends who come to visit and I want that for everybody so I really am serious about sharing this information so now how did I learn about tower gardens well the tower gardens came to me via our company the tower garden slash juice plus company and we were given this opportunity to grow and now mind you I'm not a farmer I have no interest in farming plus I'm very busy at that time I was sitting on 12 boards I was running two companies and raising five children I didn't have to I didn't have time to grow my vegetables it was easier for me to run to the market go to the open market buy the food come home prepare it and even at that I didn't have a lot of time for that but it came to me via our company and they asked us to just try it out but what happened was when I put the little seeds into the little rock wall and the second day it started sprouting and I swear I felt like a grandma I felt I was I was responsible for something growing something so precious as a little seed sprouting into a seedling then from that point we transferred into the tower garden and that's how we get our food so two weeks in this germinator kit three weeks on the tower it's ready for cutting and harvesting and then I get to eat it so how simple is that and why wouldn't I want this for myself and why wouldn't I want to share this with all of Hawaii but then the sad news came our company said Wendy we can't send these towers to Hawaii because the people Hawaii will not spend a hundred to 125 dollars to ship this in so mind you now the box is about 18 inches high it's about three feet in diameter and it weighs about 48 pounds so the shipping cost would probably be at least a hundred dollars so what I did was I shared this opportunity with my friends and they all said Wendy I want one I want one so I went to the company and I said we want it we will pay for it we want it so we put it on a pallet and we bought the first 30 tower gardens into Hawaii via Wendy's responsibility for getting it to Hawaii and so after the first 30 came 30 40 50 more people wanted it so then I approached the company and I said hey what if I bought a 45 foot mats in container and you loaded it up with 150 towers packed it up and sent it onto Hawaii and I'll take the responsibility they said okay let's give it a shot a thousand tower gardens later we have tower gardens here in Hawaii this is now the seventh year of having towers in Hawaii and now the goal is to bring in tower garden farms right here in urban Honolulu where we can grow in abundance this great food that we want to share with more and more people here in Hawaii because everybody can have grown not flown in food so I'm really excited about what the tower garden is all about the tower garden as you can see here we use no dirt growing medium that we use is called rock wool the rock wool is a volcanic organic material that is spun out into cubes we simply drop the seeds into the cube watch it grow in the germinator and within the next two weeks we just simply place it in the empty tower garden and as I mentioned in three weeks time ready for harvesting of lettuce you cut the whole head of lettuce off two to three weeks later you have another whole head and you can do this a few times I would suggest maybe about three times after that I would suggest you start more ceilings putting it in and doing it again in regards to my kale and you're going to see my beautiful kale in a few seconds my kale I let it grow until it's this big and then it gets bigger and bigger my kale averages about six to eight feet and what I do is I pick the leaves around on the bottom and the heart continues to grow as the heart continues to grow my tower sorry my kale plant becomes seven to eight feet tall and it's dynamic amazing kale robust in flavor and even in quality of nutrient level registered by the University of Mississippi so we use no dirt we boast that we use 90% this water 90% this space and we have a hundred percent success now when we're growing our food source a lot of costs comes from the fact that the real estate is expensive so we're paying rent on the land also water costs and labor costs so I can stand in right here stationary and I can pick up to 55 heads 52 heads of lettuce without moving a whole bunch just reaching and extending upwards of the tower so the labor cost is at a minimum as well so we really really enjoy what we have in the tar garden and I also want to mention our tar gardens are made not with PVC plastic but with food grade plastic so this means no toxins will leach into the water into the plants into my body it's also UV protected twice so that means it can sit in the heart of Makaha or in the desert of Dubai or in Mesa, Arizona at 120 degrees it won't crack or chip my towers have been sitting on my balcony for the last seven and a half years no cracks no chips a little discoloration but it's okay the green beautiful lush plants cover the discoloration of the tower no big deal so now I would like to show you because I know you're wondering what is a tower garden how the heck does that work I have a little video here that will explain by animation how the tower garden works so let's enjoy this tower gardens state-of-the-art aeroponic vertical garden system uses both water and air to produce more colorful better tasting and incredibly nutritious fruits vegetables and herbs tower garden has a 20 gallon reservoir at its base that stores the tower tonic nutrient solution developed by experts in plant and human nutrition tower tonic mineral blend enables superior plant growth and better nutrition from your tower garden produce the process begins once the seedlings have been placed in your tower garden here they will be nourished with tower tonic nutrient solution inside the reservoir is a small low wattage submersible pump the pump pushes the nutrient solution up through the tower to the top from there the nutrient solution drips through the central tower using a special device that evenly cascades the solution over the exposed plant roots on the journey down the tower the nutrient solution feeds the roots and becomes highly oxygenated as it cascades gently down the reservoir this process is continuous providing fresh oxygen water and nutrients to the roots of the plants this patented aeroponic process enables food crops to grow faster than they would in soil so they can be harvested more often and it makes tower garden the healthier easier smarter way to grow your produce see how simple that was and it's just as simple as that let me tell you if this chocolate maker slash housewife can grow and be very successful you can too that's how simple it is so now that you've seen the whole idea of the tower gardens let's just start take it from the beginning all we're going to do is show you the seedlings as I said we put little seeds into the rock wall and then the rock wall sits there wet with water and the seedlings start sprouting and this here this photo right here is about I would say about two weeks old and so after this stage now we're going to take each of those little rock walls and then we're going to place it into the tower garden and as you see in the next slide those are about two week old seedlings that we place into the tower and then we're going to just let it be we're going to go on there love on it breathe air into it breathe life onto it and just let it grow so that's all you have to do everything is in the kit you're just going to add water and love and then you add the water you add your tonic and it kind of does the rest so it's kind of dummy proof that's why I'm so successful at it and I want that for you too because if Wendy can grow it you can grow it too and I'm very serious about that and people ask me what kind of seeds do you use Wendy um I would suggest using non-gmo seeds uh USDA grade organic seeds and it's all listed on the seed packs so you can choose what you want to grow and they ask me does it have to be organic seed it's totally up to you what you want to grow you can grow whatever you want as long as it's not a rooted vegetable as long as it's a leafy veggie that um how you can get the seeds for it you can do what you need to do some people also source hardware stores where you have the little seedlings or the plants and what they do is I personally don't recommend it but if you need to start this way it is fine just take the plant out of the pot then you need to submerse it into water and wash all the dirt all the vermiculite everything foreign off of the root system and then I would actually spray the plants with our um organic means of pesticides which we usually use gone diluted with water and some vinegar and we would spray to make sure all the contaminated bugs will not be transported into the tower to affect the other plants and so that's simply how I would do that if I had to do it that way otherwise I truly enjoy getting the seeds sprouting it looking like tutu grandma to these babies and then from that point transplanting it into the tower and that's truly truly how simple that is so we're going to take a 60 second break right now and we're going to come back with my fabulous fantastic kale that I want to show off to all of you aloha. Hi guys I'm your host Lillian Cumick from Lillian's Vegan World. I come to you live every second Friday from 3 p.m and this is the show where I talk about the plant-based lifestyle and veganism so we go through recipes some upcoming events information about health regarding your health and just some ideas on how you can have a better lifestyle eat healthier and have fun at the same time so do join me I look forward to seeing you and aloha. Aloha my name is Becky Sampson and I'm the host of It's About Time on the ThinkTech Hawaii a digital non-profit organization that's raising public awareness join us on Wednesday at 2 p.m where we talk about real issues some of the topics will include entrepreneurship health life skills and growing your business so once again this is Becky Sampson on It's About Time on Wednesday at 2 p.m on ThinkTech Hawaii aloha. Aloha everyone so as we left you earlier the part the first part of the show truly just spoke about the tower gardens and what it does how it works so if you miss the first part go back and watch it and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about I'm just really excited because I want to share with you Wendy's crazy kale and this kale is truly out of one tower I must have on that tower probably about eight plants of kale and that's my favorite favoriteest thing to grow I grow lettuce and basil and all the other fun stuff but that kale is really what sustains me a lot of calcium proteins nutrients that my body needs daily and so every morning for the last seven and a half years I have been going to my tower cutting about 10 leaves putting it in a blender making a smoothie concoction and putting it into my body fueling my body to be able to perform at its best for the last seven and a half years and truly I have never bought kale a day in my life and the reason for that is I hadn't eaten kale until I started growing my own and so kale just wasn't something that us locals would go out and buy you know like Manoa lettuce was a daily staple for us kale it just wasn't and so now that I'm growing it I focus on growing the best quality of kale and I want this level of food into all of our bodies and so we just really want to take health back and how can we do it the tower garden is just a part of the solution to taking your health back because we're growing non-gmo chemical free cut to body fresh and so that means my kale smoothies are just about five minutes old before it enters into my system performing for me what I expect to how I expect to perform at daily and I'm going to say to you that this is my 60th birthday year I'm very excited because at 60 when I'm surfing with those brothers out there and they're like in their 20s anti-wendy can keep up and that really matters to me so I want that same level of performance for as many of us as possible so when we grow old we grow old gracefully and with a lot of them and vigor and that's what I want for all of us so not only can the tower gardens grow kale but it can grow basically anything we have peppers we have eggplants we have tomatoes watermelons cucumbers cantaloupes basically the tower can grow anything except rooted vegetables and fruit so we can grow potatoes carrots beets and radishes however I have seen radishes or beets grown on the tower the hole is only about this big so the radish head or bow sits and it blocks up the hole opening but they're going for the radish or the beet tops is why they're going to opt to grow beets in their tower garden because they want the greens of that fruit or that vegetable so that's the only reason why and the logic behind the the tower garden not being able to grow rooted veggies versus focusing on leafy veggies is because when tim blank the designer of the tower garden his heart was that with the rooted vegetables you can peel off the first layer that is involved or in contact with all the the toxins so with the lettuces the kale the chards and all of that you can't peel it off you've got to wash it off so whether they're being bugs worm slugs any of that you you've got to really soak it and wash it sometimes it's a little bit difficult to get it that clean so the focus is producing the best quality of leafy veggies the scale and the lettuces and all of that and I'm just so excited that we are able to have that that I don't have to scrub my lettuce because you know what happens if you scrub green leafy things they get all wilted and yucky very quickly and so let me tell you who can grow with the tower gardens so the department of education in the state of Hawaii really excited about the tower gardens we have tower gardens in school and one of the schools that really took to liking to the tower gardens was iola or is iolani school they have a young lady named debbie and debbie is a sustainability director so she offers her students all the means of growing she has traditional dirt farms she has aquaponics aeroponics hydroponics every different system so the student can learn basically egg or basically how and where our food source comes from and I think this is a very critical part of the curriculum that they're really experimenting and promoting this with the students because back in the day a few years before when there wasn't so much of focus especially in the urban areas if you showed a student a tomato and you asked him kids what is this they would say that's an apple auntie that's an apple or that's they wouldn't know that that was a tomato and the reason for that is if you're not involved with farming some of these students only see tomatoes as far as ketchup salsa and they never saw the tomato in its entirety in its wholeness and so by allowing them to grow in the school system you're really giving them the opportunity to enhance their quality of life because you know for a fact and I know for a fact if they grow it and they're involved with that process of it growing they're gonna probably eat it and that's the goal that we want is that these students know what they're eating where it comes from and what it can do for your body the food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food is what we're always going to promote and so we're really really excited that the Department of Education is really really gravitating to using this form of of growing and I'm just excited to be working with many many schools we go to Kamehameha we go to White Owl Elementary Campbell High School Lely Hall High School has an amazing agriculture department we're all at one point I was growing food at the Easter Seals and my students there were on wheelchairs they were autistic kids and you know what they saw the value to watching the seed drop and grow and grow and grow and then they had the pleasure of serving those salads to Auntie Wendy and then when I would turn around I would see these kids on wheelchairs and the kids with autism they were actually eating it and that was such a joy for me and this is one of the reasons why I will never stop promoting grown not flown and especially when all walks of life have this opportunity whether they're the kupuna where the kupuna could not bend down to the ground at this age in their stage in their life now they can grow vertically and it makes sense and then the keiki can grow on the lower end the kupuna can grow on the higher levels of the tower and then they can have intergenerational community around the tower gardens that to me is valuable when we can bring all these different components where everybody of every age bracket every economical status in life everybody can come along and eat the best quality of food for themselves as well as all the people they want to promote this with and so for that I am very excited as I mentioned earlier I live in a condo I probably have about three or four tower gardens on my lanai and they're thriving I have sunshine because on my top my apartment faces the west so I have sunshine from about two in the afternoon to about five thirty six and that's sufficient because you saw my kale that's the sunshine that it gets up there in my condo and it's very happy and it's very nutritious for me and it makes me very happy and very healthy but I also have a tower garden in my apartment and that's because I like to show off the indoor lights and these are led lights yes I have sunshine on my balcony but I also want to show that if you don't have sunshine in your apartments or in your facilities you can still grow the best quality of food as well the lights are on for about fourteen to sixteen hours it's led lights the good thing for me is I live in a condo high in the sky and I actually have the penthouse so my penthouse looks like a spaceship because it's all lit up with these four led lights now because I have these lights in my living room I don't turn on the lights in my living room or my dining room or my kitchen anymore because those lights are feeding the plants helping them grow but it's also cutting back on my household electricity bill although it has its use of electricity but again they are four led bulbs which make a lot of sense they're not hot to touch and they just continue to help my plants grow consistently and I might even add that the tower garden lights these led lights actually have a consistent level of rays going into my plants so it actually it does even better than just sunshine because sunshine sometimes is not there for example we have these lights growing with our tower garden farms in O'Hare airport for the last eight years we have towers at O'Hare airport producing enough food for the restaurants in the facility as well as excess product productivity so what they're doing is they're packaging it up and they're selling it to the passerbys and passengers coming off their planes so indoors that's what's happening we have tower growing growing all over in fact at Orange County Convention Center in Florida people actually book their conventions in that facility because they know the food that comes out of that kitchen will be the food that was grown right there at the convention center how cool is that and also I want to share Oracle Baseball Field in San Francisco before it was known as AT&T Baseball Field they also have tower gardens right in their end zones where they're offering their patrons freshly grown food so instead of just eating hot dogs hamburgers and popcorn you've got fresh produce that you can serve up to your bodies now I want to segue into how we work with other community organizations every Boys and Girls Club in the United States will have an opportunity to have a tower garden given to them by our company and there are over 4,000 boys and girls clubs in the US so if you know anyone that is passionate about growing and would love to help the Boys and Girls Club let us know and we can help to get that tower garden to the boys and girls facilities and now I would like to introduce the brainchild behind it all this is Tim Blank. Tim Blank came to us again in January and he's here to help promote grown not flown so here he was at the CIP Culinary Institute of the Pacific where we were implementing tower garden farm and growing food that the students will be able to grow and watch and then pick and get it to the different restaurants on campus how amazing would that be that we can actually do that right there on campus as well as what they're doing at like Colorado University and many other universities USC UCLA they're all doing that and so we want to be right up there with the other colleges of the nation so as promised I want to share with you why I'm so passionate about this tower garden and and why it makes so much sense this right here is the rat lung the rat lung worm little gray black brownish snail or a slug that has been infiltrating infiltrating our big island of Hawaii I was on the phone the other night with my friend she's a vegan but she will not eat anything that is grown from that island especially because she has been affected and afflicted with the rat lung worm disease when I heard this story I said you know what we got to get this message out the rat lung worm should not be able to climb up the tower garden the base as well as a tower and if it does because they have so many I would suggest that you put copper tape around the base or a row of pennies around the base so that the slugs the snail slugs won't go over into the tower into the your plants and I strongly recommend that and this is the exact reason why I'm doing this they're not reporting it on TV but there are so many people right now suffering in the hospital with this disease and once you get it it shuts down your whole immune system and I don't want that for any of us especially our kiki so tower gardens make a lot of a lot of sense and as I wrap things up because they're running out of time I just want to show you again these are the perfect beautiful tower gardens we're growing food for all of you for all of Hawaii I believe every tower every home every lanai should have a tower garden within their reach and that means the best quality of food for all of us so remember hashtag grown not flown and I want this level of living and life for all of you out there if you have any questions just give us a call aloha from now from think tech Hawaii aloha everyone